Bauble Masters

Nate HeissFriday, July 16, 2004

inally, the day I have been waiting for has arrived! Even though Fifth Dawn has been out for paper cards for a short while now, the online versions of the cards are only now ready for play. So for all of you paper card slingers who were wondering why no Fifth Dawn was being included in my decks, now you know why! This column is primarily for the Magic Online players (hence the price of the deck in tickets), even though the decks can also be made for regular play. I have a lot of cool decks in store for the next few weeks that I have been saving up for the release, so stay tuned.

The first deck I would like to talk about makes use of one of Fifth Dawn's interesting themes: Baubles. Now there have already been several thematic articles about baubles (also known as “cogs” by the R&D types) and their various uses, but I wanted to make a deck that used all those cool things in-game.

Thus I set forth on my bauble quest, and came to the conclusion that Blue and White are the colors best suited for doing powerful things with puny artifacts. Artificer's Intuition and Auriok Salvagers are probably the best Bauble engines. With a White/Blue base, the deck almost just fell right into place, using and reusing various 1 casting cost artifacts to create good board position. The result?

This deck shows off what a 1 casting cost artifact can really do. The first and most obvious thing about the deck is the cool things you can do with Auriok Salvagers and Aether Spellbomb. It is rather easy to do and gives you the ability to bounce any creature for 4 mana. Feel free to Condescend the creature on its way back into play. Trinket Mage and Artificer's Intuition give you access to many different tricks depending on what you need. If you need life, get Sunbeam Spellbomb. If you need to kill some creatures, get Viridian Longbow. If you need to stop something from hitting you or just force in an attack, get Leonin Bola. Need Mana? Get an Artifact land or Wayfarer's Bauble. If you are just looking to put some good spells back into your deck (Condescend is a goodie) then use Conjurer's Bauble over and over with the Salvagers.

If there is one thing this deck is good at, it is going through cards. With all the baubles, it should be easy to thin your deck enough to find the key element, whether it be the Salvagers, Artificer's Intuition, or something else. One of the really cool things you can do with Artificer's Intuition is get Myr Servitors with it, then discard the Servitors to get more…simply cast the last one and watch the other three pop back into play!

Use Viridian Longbow to shoot down larger creatures by passing it to another untapped creature after each shot. If you have 6 mana and three creatures available (when the bow is already equipped on one of them), you can deal 3 damage!

Use Artificer's Intuition to thin all of the artifact lands out of your deck. This will make your usage of Conjurer's Bauble more noticeable since you will have a better chance of drawing the card you put back in.

Don't forget you have two Great Furnaces and a Pyrite Spellbomb in case you need some quick burn. If you already have enough Blue and White mana, it might not be a bad idea to make it the next mana source you fetch up with Artificer's Intuition or Trinket Mage just in case you need an emergency 2 damage to kill something. Reusing the Pyrite Spellbomb over and over again can be very effective.

Adding Money to the Deck

Pristine Angel would be a great add to this deck, as it would really eliminate the need to ping your opponents to death. The Angel knows how to put a good clock on. Thirst for Knowledge would also be a nice addition to this deck. Even though it has many ways to draw cards, it doesn't have many ways to do it as an instant, and Thirst For Knowledge would also help if you were already adding Pristine Angels. Strangely enough I think Beacon of Tomorrows would be a really cool card to add, since you will often be able to whittle down your deck to only one card via all the card drawing and thinning, and then you can take infinite turns. I don't know about you, but I would really enjoy infinite turns…